1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital image processing technique, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for detecting and removing eyeglasses from a digital image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Face recognition plays an important role in digital image processing techniques concerned with the study of human faces. An important requirement for a successful face recognition system is its robustness against occlusions appearing in images of human faces. Eyeglasses are some of the most common objects that occlude faces. Presence of eyeglasses in images can significantly decrease the performance of a face recognition system. Variability in lighting conditions in face images poses additional challenges to eyeglasses detection and face recognition.
A few publications have studied the impact of occluded regions in a face image on face detection. One such technique is described in US Patent Application 2005/0190963 A1 entitled “Target Object Detecting Method, Apparatus, and Program”. The method described in this work detects faces that include occlusions such as eyeglasses. This method, however, is concerned with face detection, and does not detect, remove, or replace eyeglasses in faces. This method also does not address the difficulties caused by variability in lighting conditions of face images.
A disclosed embodiment of the application addresses these and other issues by utilizing a method and apparatus for automatic eyeglasses detection and removal. The method and apparatus automatically detect and remove eyeglasses, and reconstruct the face regions occluded by eyeglasses to produce a face image without eyeglasses.